I have given up trying to read' The Silmarillion'. I started it when it first came out, over forty years ago, when my enthusiasm for Tolkien had already waned a little, and I had passed on to literary pastures new. And read so far, and no further. But a review of the bookshelves revealed a number of unread or unfinished tomes- this was one of them. I set to work, but reluctantly gave up after about two hundred pages. Reluctant because I usually read a book to the end, and hate to give up, however turgid the offering.
I got lost in the detail, couldn't make the connections, could see no overarching narrative. I fell into that group which one reviewer identified when The Silmarillion was first published; 'it will probably be bought by more people than will read it'.
No overarching narrative; it's concerned with a mythic past, but has no projection into the present or future. Okay, so many books are 'just a history' with no present or future about them, but Tolkien aimed higher, I understand. He aimed to give us our equivalent of the Nordic sagas, earth us in a grand narrative that is entirely our own.
Except, of course, we already have one, which has earthed us,- and heaven'd us- for the last two thousand years, and continues to be- despite all claims to the contrary by the chattering classes of one sort or another, the bedrock on which we stand.
I am far from bored when I read 'In the beginning...'- the opening words of the Old Testament, and the gospel of John. And the grand narratives of the Revelation to finish. And in between the cosmic theology of Paul's epistles, the shocking authority of Jesus, the heroes and villains, the tender love of God. All human life is there!- something absent from The Silmarillion.
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